Transcriber: Katarina Ericson Reviewer: Denise RQ
I grew up in India and then went to America,
did my higher studies,
did most of my professional life in America,
and moved back to India about a year and a half ago.
I wanted to write about the East and the West;
what can we learn from each other?
I just wanted to come up with this brilliant book.
Then I found my biggest stumbling block: what is East?
Is it India, is it China, is it Pakistan, is it Bangladesh, is it Vietnam?
We are all so different from each other.
And what is West?
Is it America, is it Britain, is it Hungary?
We are all so different from each other.
That's when I understood
that generalities are sometimes dangerous,
and the only thing I can do
is to explain what I observed
in my experience of moving between cultures.
So the biggest thing is that there are differences.
It doesn't matter whether you go across countries,
or go across the street between parents and children,
there are differences.
So the point is, how do we overcome these differences?
Especially in a business setting, what can we do with them?
So I will tell you what I've learned through three stories.
The first one is about a visit my husband and I made to a hi-tech park.
In India right now there is a huge influx of new buildings that are coming up,
there are a lot of companies that are coming in,
so there are buildings being built.
So we went, and this builder has spent a lot of money;
Italian marble, beautiful wood, fantastic glass.
We were walking on the floor,
and we realized there was this wonderful Italian marble,
but the grouting between the tiles was all up and down.
It just wasn't flush with the tile,
which means you stumble sometimes when you walk,
and more importantly,
the whole aesthetic of that tile is taken away
because the grouting wasn't good.
So my first reaction was, darn these workers,
they never pay any attention, they're lazy,
they spend most of their time drinking tea, etc., etc.
But somehow that stayed with me,
and I thought, suddenly, about the person doing that work.
I realized that this person has come from some neighboring village,
where he lives in a mud hut,
where his whole goal in life is probably to buy a really high quality plastic tarp,
that he can put on the hut so the children don't get wet when it rains,
and he's never set foot [inside] a building where there's perfect flooring.
To him, a floor is good enough.
So you have the tiles, and they're jointed by this grouting;
what are you complaining about?
So, when you understand that, suddenly you don't make them wrong.
Now I see a fantastic business opportunity,
to start vocational schools all over India to teach people basic skills,
of carpentry, of masonry, of plumbing,
and I think we can have world class talent in that skill set
that really gets exposure to what is perfection.
So there's no point getting upset if you don't understand the problem.
Now the second thing is a lesson I learned when I was planning an executive trip.
I was at Intel and we were planning this trip to India.
You know, being the western, very analytical company we are,
we would have weekly meetings, and, you know,
where am I going to be at 8.42, where am I going to be at 8.45;
once you go to India it doesn't matter, it all depends on the traffic.
But, nevertheless, we make our plans, we had our weekly meetings,
and fantastic, this group was involved, we went there,
I took all of them beautiful gifts, I got them some soap, some perfumes,
had the wonderful meeting, gave them the gifts.
As we were wrapping up that day, the leader of the team came,
her name is Nandini, she came and said, "Can we all take a picture together?"
We said, "Yeah, yeah, if we have the time, we'll take a picture together."
And then it was an hour before we had to leave,
she came again and said, "Can we take the photograph together?"
So we were still having press meetings, things weren't done,
I said, "Yeah, yeah, we'll see if we get the chance."
We're getting out the door, she came running to me,
she said, "Look, the entire team is in place,
you just need to come for two seconds, we want to take this picture together."
And by then I was like, what is this obsession with photographs?
I said, "OK, whatever." I rolled my eyes, inside, not physically.
And with a smile, we went, we sat down, we took the picture, we left.
I was like, "Oh God, these Indians, they're obsessed with photographs."
Anyway, fast forward 13 years,
I hired Nandini to be in my team in Bangalore now,
and a few weeks ago, she brought me that photograph.
And she said, "Remember? This is the photograph we took."
And suddenly, I understood
that for them a photograph is not just a photograph;
it is a memory of the time spent together,
and it's something that's carried forever and ever.
And I realized that in India, to make things work,
you need to do the simplest things:
taking a photograph with the team you work with,
giving a little certificate with the signature of the CEO,
carry much, much more weight than the perfume I've given,
because long after the soap is melted and the perfume is gone,
the photograph still remains.
It's the simple things that matter.
And finally, one thing I observed in India when I went
is that people bring their personal lives into work, all the time.
"I can't come because my neighbor's son is getting married", whatever.
there are 20,000 reasons and we have 50,000 holidays.
So I said, "What is the productivity, we hardly get anything done here!"
Then I thought about when I was at Intel, I was in Portland, Oregon.
I had a new car, and I was driving one day, and I had an accident.
The car was totaled, but I was fine,
so I came out of the car for air because it just was a shock,
and those were the days of no cellphones so I couldn't call at work
and tell them I wasn't going to make it to the meeting.
Anyway, the police came, took the report, dropped me home,
and somebody gave me a ride so I went to work a couple of hours late.
But everybody came and said,
"How are you feeling? Did anything happen in the accident?"
I said, "How did you all know?"
Then one of my colleagues stepped forward and said,
"I was actually driving by and I saw you, and you seemed fine,
so I came to work because I didn't want to be late
and I told everybody what happened so that we could rearrange your meetings."
I thought, how nice, how efficient,
but something lingered in my head that day and I didn't know what it was.
A few weeks ago, I was supposed to have a one-on-one with my colleague,
and she called to ask if she could come a couple of hours late.
I said OK, and she came, and I asked what happened.
She said her best friend called her, and dad wasn't picking up the phone;
since she's a neighbor, she went and found that dad had had a stroke,
and that's why he wasn't picking up the phone.
She rushed him to the hospital, admitted him,
and came to work two hours late.
I was a bit irritated, so I said,
"What would your friend have done if you hadn't answered the phone?"
She said she would probably have called another neighbor.
I said, "Why didn't you ask her to do that?"
She just looked at me with this blank face and said, "I didn't even think about it."
That's when I remembered that accident in Portland,
and I understood what it was that nagged me;
I wished my colleague had pulled over, and come to me, and given me a hug.
Because sometimes, in our rush to get to where we want to,
we forget to take the time out to help somebody who is in need,
and it's OK to bring that into work,
because that's what makes work really life.
So with these three lessons,
I understood that there are companies out there
who actually can turn the weaknesses into benefits,
this last point I talked about, bringing your home into work.
There's a company called Sierra Atlantic.
What they found is that every time they interview young employees,
they say, "I'll get back to you tomorrow,
because I need to check with my Dad if the salary is OK or not," etc.
So they realized that parents play a very big part
in these kids making decisions.
So they said, "For your interviews, bring your parents with you."
And they actually instituted something called 'Bring your parents to work day'.
So once a year, everyone brings their parents to work,
and they celebrate.
In a country, in software services, where the turnover is very high,
they've managed to retain most of their employees,
because now the whole family is a part of this.
I think they didn't set out to do that,
but, just by paying attention to what it is that the community wants,
they actually create a business advantage.
So from all this I learned that the power of imagination lies,
in addition to dreaming something big,
it also lies in observing what is not seen in front of us,
what is not said.
It is the poetry that exists in the pauses between words.
If we pay attention to the culture, if we pay attention to the community,
we can actually turn the things
that we see as negatives into opportunities
So, I thought, for me, what is the legacy that I've learnt,
what is the legacy I feel my forefathers have left for me?
I started looking at the life around me, instead of some business books,
I started looking at the people I care about.
I have two fathers; one is my biological father,
and the other one is who I call my corporate father.
My biological father was a pediatrician,
and the biggest lesson I learned from him was about love;
I used to always argue with him:
"You had an arranged marriage. You didn't even know mum when you married.
What did you know about love?"
You know, it's about looking at somebody across a room and your eyes lock,
this fluttering of the heart, it's holding hands and all this stuff.
To me, love was passion.
He always used to laugh and say,
"Whether you love and marry, or marry and love,
the real work starts after getting married."
My sisters always used to tell me this story,
my mum and dad loved to go for a walk on the beach.
My mum didn't know how to ride a bicycle, but she used to love pushing my dad.
So every Sunday, they would go to the beach
- while the kids were playing behind, they would walk -
with mum pushing his bicycle, and the two of them would chat.
And when my dad was 45, my mother died.
He decided he would never marry again,
because he said, I had my best friend, I have three daughters,
I have a great profession, I don't need anybody else.
And to me, now,
when I think of all the things he wrote, the things he said,
I understand that he understood love
more than anyone I've seen who fell in love.
And when I drive on Marine Drive in Chenai and look at the beach,
I look at the two people walking, with the woman pushing the bicycle,
and that is my definition of love.
And the other definition of legacy is what I learned from Andy Grove,
who is a son of this land and who was the CEO of Intel,
who I consider my corporate father.
I interviewed him, and I asked him,
"How do you grade yourself as a CEO?"
He thought about it and said, "B plus."
And I was surprised, and I said, "In your regime,
the company has become the largest semi-conductor company in the world."
And he's not quite a man of humility,
so I said, "Why do you give yourself a B plus?"
And then he said something that was really interesting for me,
"The true test of a CEO
isn't about the promise of a company when he leaves,
it is what happens to the company five to ten years down the line."
It is, did he leave enough legacy, enough plan, enough product in place
so that the company is successful much longer after he left?
He felt he did not do a good job of leaving future plans.
That kind of an honest look into yourself,
and seeing what is my own contribution,
is something that I learned from Andy,
and I consider that my biggest professional lesson.
I think about what young economies, like India, like Hungary,
like many other countries, what do we have to look forward to?
And this reminds me of a story.
I'm from the land of stories after all.
The story of an elephant who gets caught and taken to the zoo; a baby elephant.
He goes to the zoo, big rope, big wooden post,
it's tied to the post.
Tries one day to get out, can't get out, tries second day to get out, but he can't,
tries for ten days to get out, and it can't.
It just resigns itself to its fate and stays in the zoo.
Years pass by, and one day, a little boy comes to the zoo,
and he asks the zookeeper, "Why does this elephant look so sad?"
And the zookeeper says, "Because it doesn't want to be here.
We brought it and we tied it, and for ten days it tried to escape,
it couldn't escape, and it just resigned itself to its fate."
And the little boy says,
"But the elephant is this big, the rope is this small,
and the wooden post is this big.
All it takes is for the elephant to yank, and it can be free.
Why isn't it doing that?"
The zookeeper said,
"The elephant now believes it cannot get out.
it doesn't see its own strength,
that is has grown, that it has become big;
it doesn't see its own strength, that's why it's staying the way it is.
For me, when I see economies like India,
we haven't realized our own strength yet.
And I think if we do, I think we will create a world, in fact,
where we don't follow norms.
All of us, I think, should celebrate our differences,
should hang on to our differences, and yet try to understand each other's language.
And we have the true opportunity to redefine success,
and that is what I feel the new economies can contribute to the world.
Instead of looking at success
as the billions of dollars you accumulate in a bank,
we have to redefine it as something that takes into account
this idea of bringing work into life, this idea of being there for each other,
this idea of how do we contribute to the communities.
I have come up with an idea.
One of my favorite quotes is,
"Life ought not to be measured in the number of breaths we take,
but the number of moments that take our breath away."
So really, really the true treasure
isn't hungrily, greedily collecting these moments;
taking time and savoring that little kiss your child leaves on your cheek,
and that breeze that touches your face,
that friendship you start and that conversation you have.
If we hang on to every moment,
and try to be billionaires of moments,
and celebrate the people who are billionaires of moments
and make them cool and rocking,
I think we, as new economies,
will not only create a new world
but make the difference
in a way that we can't even dream of.
So I invite all of you
to join our club of billionaires of moments.
Thank you.
(Applause)